


Glassword and Whimsy

by Eleint



Series: Lyrical [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Free Verse, Gen, Homesickness, Love, Memory, Mourning, Mythology - Freeform, Other, Poetry, Time - Freeform, Travel, relationships, under 500 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7228369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleint/pseuds/Eleint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short, unconnected works</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whimsy (1)

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these poems were originally posted elsewhere on twitter, or DA.

There's a graveyard in a meadow where the sparrows go to die,  
and a café in the evening you can go to see time fly.  
And your bones are digging deeper, I can can feel it cutting in,  
While you grin with carefree banter and then pull the night within.


	2. Prompt: Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The use of the G***sy slur has been replaced by Roma, as when this was first published there was a lot I didn't know about the world. And for something that was brought about by news of discrimination and prejudices, that doesn't seem right.

The Roma Queen, she's here again,  
She comes the way she goes.  
Swift as a breeze and light as air,  
With a spark in her eye, and nary a care  
To dance by the light of the moon.

The Roma Queen is here again,  
Dressed in the richest of rags.  
In brilliant flashes of shades - blue and red,  
A tinkle of bells in wildly-knot hair,  
To steal away in the night.

The Roma Queen in here again,  
Seen through the flickering flame.  
A spirit, a ghost, a wandering soul,  
In her kohl-rimmed eyes, a name.  
Her grim visage, a judgment foretold  
To one who the innocent blamed.


	3. Romanorum Custodiae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Ave!_
> 
> A ghost story

Dead, from times long past  
Bodies as dust,  
Returned to the Earth  
Yet still they march.

Treading old paths — well worn roads  
A silent watch to keep.


	4. Whimsy (2)

To dance across the universe  
On a path of stars  
That lights the way  
To guide us home.  
Like a million stepping stones,  
Scattered  
Across the inky river that is Night.  
Each shining mote  
Speaking of unknown worlds  
We could, but hope to see.


	5. Recess

An empty room:

Two doors,

A window.

One single chair.

 


	6. Pachyderm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words to my mother

Elephants are social animals.

They group together –   
a community founded on teachings and knowledge   
passed on from a past generation

The shelter, for protection and nurture,  
Where those who need it can stumble towards skills and lessons:  
road maps and language so that they’re never alone

And one matriarch to lead them, until they leave, or grow.

(I learned knitting from my mother, and she, from hers;  
small hands fumbling with needles and yarn, in a tangled mess strewn across the floor.

I thank you for your patience, 

you were always kind, even when I would not listen.)

The brain of an elephant can weigh up to 11 pounds,  
they need it to remember:  
oases in the heat of the dry season,  
the red warning of a hunter’s clothes,   
grief from a poacher’s gun – aimed true.

Elephants remember their dead —

 

One day,   
I’ll forget you.


	7. Our heroes are figureheads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recall that the history of the victor prevails.

It's easy, putting words into the mouths of the dead.   
They're dead.   
Their objections, if they had any are as lost to us as their bodied selves,  
in dust,  
in dirt.

None have returned to us from that Far Country we will all come to know,  
one day.  
The dead do not speak:   
Tongues stilled,  
voices lost. 

But sometimes, I wonder - if only we could hear them,   
What would they tell us?  
What would they say?

 

Would we listen?


	8. denial

I travelled along hidden paths lost to time  
A paltry saint – offering forth the prayers of the people  
Spurning heaven, cursing hell


	9. Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: self-inflicted injury mentioned

I slit my throat,  
And all that came pouring out   
were regrets:

All the words I never spoke— the _No_ s I'd choked down,   
the stray compliment, the leashed admonishments...   
washing the ground beneath my feet until mud remained.


	10. Seachange

Jump beneath the waves

Deeper  
No, deeper still

till the light barely gleams

This is where the Sea dances  
Fathoms below in dark and cold


	11. Snippets

Winter will give way to summer, and summer too, must yield in its time.

* * *

Between two mirrors,  
infinity stretches,  
making a world of stars


	12. Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we mourn differently

Looking into empty spaces  
talking to air  
waiting for the answer that never comes

Maybe...

It would have been better had i the tears  
one sharp flood of grief  
rather that this slow bleed of the heart  
now waves lapping at the corners  
now puddles

How bare these chamber walls?

Shadows lengthen across the floor, the walls  
unimpeded

And nowhere i go has any sign  
no remnant of you remains

(I forget each time;  
turning at that familiar step,  
the call of a voice, but it's not you.  
it's never you)

You're gone  
and it all crumbles into the vacuum

You're gone

I miss you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From old scribblings found in a notebook. This must have been from, oh, 4 years ago. This version is very different from what was written though the sentiment remains.


	13. Chapter 13

Promises trip off his tongue.  
Pearls. Cheaper than the last wares of a Haungzhou fishmonger.

It's so easy for him to say _yes, of course, yes,_  
but always to other people.


	14. SSDD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Same shit, different day)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the end of the year, and the deaths are still coming. Perhaps it's just the age bracket, but growing up - you find that there are more and more people are leaving you behind. 
> 
> Time has no mercy. It just is. 
> 
> I would like to bid 2016 a very emphatic farewell - the year when all the troubles finally bubble over - and to working towards making the following years, days better. Brighter. Bolder.

It happened just as the car engine turned off -   
seconds of sound, a single snippet of news...  
I was wrong, I told myself.   
I misheard.   
My Chinese isn't _that_ good.   
I'll look it up later. 

(I made my brother do it. I was too scared.)

Sometimes, it feels like everything's a part of some very long dream.  
An odd one; some tortured hybrid of mundane nightmare  
Full of ups and downs and upheavals  
and the ground shifts under my feet.

I turn on the news,  
and my heart bleeds.  
Another bad news day.   
There's no crying over that anymore,  
the apathy settled in months ago.

S.S.D.D!

Everything seemed to be tearing itself apart.   
A world order tipping on the edge of change,  
and it doesn't seem like it'll be for the better.


	15. Dilemma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A philosophical question? Or is it?

Two men cling to a single branch.

It will not hold them; both know this  
Who let's go first?

_< < Rewind >>_

Two men were walking along the cliff side when a tiger runs by.  
In a panic, they both climb a nearby tree, scrambling higher, ever higher. 

(You could touch the sun from here.) 

The tree falls. Its roots cling to the rock. 

The tiger gives up, finds easier prey:  
Two men are not worth death. 

_< < Fast Forward >>_

Two men wait on a single branch. 

Climbing back, the roots loosens their hold  
Staying, their strength gives out.  
Staying together, the branch breaks. 

One could climb, and the other stay, but death awaits. 

_Remember the tiger._

What to do?  
Who let's go? 

Learn to fly. 

_(Like Icarus once did.)_


	16. Mythic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I miss the warm light of morning

_Oh but where is the sun?_

It is lost to us. 

In these lands, Icarus flew on waxen wings for a memory.


	17. Release

teach me how to let go —

when my hands are bone white, cramped

clenched still to something long turned to ash


	18. Starboard

Every ship  
dreams of  
a safe harbour —

But my home is among   
the stars, and the  
Sea will not take me there. 


	19. Untitled

I do not believe in an afterlife. When you die, you are star dust and dirt. Food for worms and a supper for trees.

But that is what I believe.

What I know is this: a part of me lingers in the minds of those I’ve met.

The passing stranger, sparking through neurons and the fading dream.

And that, my dear, is immortality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to tumblr.


	20. Autumn

Too soon, the leaves fall

A riot; of colors and burning hues &mdash

an earthly carpet. 

The last hurrah before winter's arrival.


	21. Flight

A roar, and the engines wake,  
The body trembling, its rattles felt down to the bone,  
As we leap, abandoning the earth below. 

There's delight in the sky.   
No plane wants to touch the ground.


	22. Grief

Grief is a funny thing. 

It makes time flow in fits and starts,  
days blur. And before you know it, it's three am tomorrow.

But it's not tomorrow.  
It's today. 

And you try your damnedest to remember, what were you supposed to be doing again?

Something important, but it's too hard to care.  
The idea of doing is out of reach.

And you just exist.  
You're here. 

In that hazy fog,  
when your guts tell you the world is ending.

But still you have to be.


	23. ID please

The world never stands still, but it feels like it does.   
The rush of others walking by, moving on with their lives.   
Working, learning. Hitting all those milestones that we're supposed to aim for. Or that's what we're told. 

There's something oddly untouchable about them.   
Baubles, bright and glinting, all wrapped up in cotton wool. 

It makes you think that your own life is static. Caught up in that old routine, unchanging.  
Just the same old deal over and over. (It scares me. Does it scare you?)

At times I'm afraid that I'm the one behind the mirror.  
Standing and watching, always a fraction too slow, 

A reflection of a world that isn't. 

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expanded from a line first posted to twitter.


	24. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

Someone should have told Orpheus that a mirror would be his best friend. 

Or maybe they did, and he just hadn't listened, too focused on the _hows_ to think of anything beyond his quest for Eurydice; the idea of love, of a woman who was.  


No one who takes from the Gods ever went unpunished.  
No one who bargains with the Gods ever truly got what they wanted, desire turns to ash, and the price runs back three-fold unto they who dare.  
And Death is a growing domain.


	25. Tell me, tell me

Do you love me,  
or do you love love?

My faults are many,  
but you barely plumbed their depths  
before the declarations of _forever_.

~~_and ever  
_~~

~~_and ever_~~

__~~~~  


~~_and ever..._~~

__

Faith is hard— I've been burned before,

My heart's been mended too many times,  
knotted and scarred, it no longer tips easily into your hands.  
Falling instead, in pieces.  
The harsh words, and rough corners that would take a lifetime to navigate.

But didn't you promise me forever? 

Once the dam breaks,  
and every dark corner of me is illuminated in your hands...

I'm scared.

Learn me and love me?

Or learn me and loose me?

_(Please. I need to know.)_


End file.
